Update: The general update is complete, with the only casualty being every single post category and any form of order on this crappy little rag, meaning it is now a disorganized mess… which, although poetically just for this place, simply won’t stand. I’m starting the scut work of reorganizing now.
I’ll be adding separate categories for my annual Nerd Prom coverage (Amazingly, the page views spike like a motherfucker over that stuff), and I’ve also added a big, simple Subscribe button that’ll let you add The American Jerk to the RSS service of your choice without having to think or sober up. And actually, I’d strongly advise that you use it; I go through enough fits and starts updating this pig that it’s probably better for you to just let the Magical Internets Fairy tell you when I’ve done so.
I’ve also added a Share / Save button to the bottom of each post that will allow you to immediately refer anything you like to Digg, Reddit, or any of those damn services. After all: you read it; why should you suffer alone?
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The American Jerk has been running on the same version of WordPress since I cranked it up out of retirement and into this wheezing, every-once-in-a-while-when-I-feel-like-it-or-I’m-not-too-hungover comedy juggernaut that it is today.
Which normally I would say is fine and leave alone because I am a firm believer that only a dingbat fucks around with a stable system. Any computer system is like a marriage: if you’ve got a good thing going, you’ll want to think long and hard before you bring home padded handcuffs, an assless Tonto costume and a stripper who dots her “i”‘s with hypodermic needles. That way lies pain, frustration, heartbreak and madness. Just ask Christie Brinkley’s ex-husband.
However, I am learning that the version of WordPress I installed comes from a simpler time, when there were no YouTube videos to embed, Captchas prevented comment spam, and people thought blogging had a future in it. Sadly, those days are gone, and the code monkeys who come up with widgets for WordPress are no longer interested in supporting a Luddite rocking an old version on the off chance he or she gets picked up by CNN and needs a dedicated support dude. And while I still hold out hope of being picked up by CNN, I’ve come to terms with the fact that my introduction will be, “A Boston man went on a psychotic rampage this morning…”
Half of the plug ins I use on The American Jerk are three years old and no longer work. Every time I publish something, my Web server tells Technorati that I’m dead and spammers that I am a lonely old man who would like to talk to salesmen about erectile enhancement, or at least downloadable sudoku puzzles to distract me from my elderly impotence.
So today, the pig gets upgraded to a new shade of lipstick. WordPress assures that this is a simple and painless process, but these are the same people whose business model includes giving away enterprise-level Web publishing software for free, so naturally, I know they are lying.
The upgrade process begins now. As I’ve said before: WordPress claims that code is poetry. If that’s true, then this Web site is about to become a dirty fucking limerick.
